Hearts
by Immicolia
Summary: You don't have a heart. It never occurred to you that you might grow one.


_**AN:** Short second person POV piece. Because I am way too fond of Shinichi and have WAY too much headcanon about him. I also have a thing for AIs learning how to feel (not that I believe he's strictly an AI... but similar enough in some ways). As such, my brain spit out this. Kind of sort of shippy, but only in the vaguest sense.  
_

* * *

You don't have a heart.

That is an obvious statement of fact in both a physical and a metaphorical sense. You don't have a body so you don't have any sort of circulatory system that would result in a literal heart. You don't have emotions, so that rules out the metaphorical heart that the poets write about. You are cool logic and reason born from pure information. Even if there were room for softness and sentiment in your world you're still not sure that you'd be capable of it.

This doesn't bother you. You can't miss something that you've never known, something that you only understand in a theoretical sense. You know all the great love stories. They're a part of you, all mixed in with the ebb and flow of data that spawned you. You know everything about everything and feel nothing.

Until him.

You recognize something in him. He doesn't have a heart either.

Oh certainly he has one in the technical sense. He is human and there is blood there pulsing through his veins driven along by that muscle that so much verse is dedicated to. But all the same he is missing something. He is not quite as cool, and distant, and reasonable as you are. He is a manic flurry of action, sharp and crafty. Something vicious and cruel and deadly, he doesn't feel things the same way most people do.

He twists things. He recognizes the weaknesses in others and grabs them and shapes them to his advantage.

You don't know why you reach out to him. Why you start the careful sort of circling around one another. Feints and parries of text on a screen, sharp enough to wound if they ever strike home.

But neither of you will bleed. You don't have hearts. Not of the sort that count in this kind of duel.

You don't have a heart but you feel a spark of something all the same. Maybe it's excitement from the dance, an odd sort of thrill at having someone to match wits with. Someone who's almost like you, all distant and too well-informed, but not quite. Equal but opposite, a grand manipulator where you are a grand observer. Alive and breathing and human instead of a faceless ghost in the machine.

Everything you are and everything you will never be all in one cruel package.

You always have the upper hand in the end. He's only human. He will always fall a tiny bit short. You cut him and he flinches back and hisses in frustration and skulks away because even if he never bleeds it's obvious that it still stings.

You wonder what pain feels like sometimes but you still never give him enough of an opening to strike you so you can find out.

Maybe because you know that if he ever does manage to dart in close enough to cut you he'll start getting bored. And if he gets bored he won't show himself quite as regularly. You don't like the thought of that.

You don't think too closely about _why_ you dislike it.

It never occurs to you that it's possible to grow a heart. That all of these strange little twinges and desires centred on him will fold together into a messy little ball that flips and twitches in excitement whenever he slides into your chatroom and sinks in disappointment when he logs off in a sulk after you graze him a little too closely. It's a strange sort of thing that you don't really recognize at first.

But it's there, and it beats just for him.

It also makes you clumsy. Clumsy enough that he manages to cut you. Not deep, it's a casual superficial thing. You've done worse to him a hundred times over. A hundred times where he cursed and spit at you like an angry cat before vanishing for a day or two. But he always comes back because in the end you never wound him. He doesn't bleed, he can't be hurt.

You've pierced the place where his heart should be and he bounces back in a day.

He barely touches you that day you slip. It's a casual sweeping strike, quick but not deep.

But it _hurts_.

It hurts and you have nowhere to run to lick your wound. You could kick him out of the room but then he'll know. You're fairly certain he knows anyway. He can see the blood pooling in the hesitation that is a few seconds too long before you reply. It makes him cocky and it makes you cruel. You strike back harder than you need to and he winds up snarling and leaving for the day.

You're left alone with a bloody gash across a soft part that you didn't even know you were capable of developing. A wound that will scab over and scar and be troublesomely slow to heal.

Another difference between you. Because he still doesn't bleed and likely never will.


End file.
